Emmanuel Cooper

Emmanuel Cooper, who has died aged 73, was one of Britain’s most distinctive
and distinguished contemporary potters.

Photo: Ceramic Review

6:23PM GMT 05 Feb 2012

Cooper’s first solo exhibition, in 1968 at Queen Mary College, London, was followed by nearly 30 others, along with numerous group exhibitions at home and abroad. Highly prized by connoisseurs, his work is represented in national collections, including the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Royal Scottish Museum, and in the Cleveland Craft Centre and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

His pots characteristically combine a purity of form, redolent of the Northern Puritan tradition in which their maker grew up, with bold — even flamboyant — colours, heavily influenced by the Sixties and Seventies counterculture in which he played a significant part. He has been described as “one of the great glaze technicians of our time”, the shiny smoothness of his smaller pieces contrasting with the rough textures of his larger bowls, in which, in his own words, “deep iron blacks and blues break through the surface – like the dark rich earth under melting snow”.

In addition to his work as a potter, Cooper was a prolific author, writing 28 books on ceramics, photography and painting. His two preoccupations came together in 1970, when he co-founded the magazine Ceramic Review, with Eileen Lewenstein; he edited it for 40 years, initially with Lewenstein and latterly alone. For 50 years, from his first post at the Central School, Tottenham, to his last as Visiting Professor at the Royal College of Art, he was an inspirational teacher and mentor to generations of young artists.

Emmanuel Cooper was born on December 12 1938 at Pilsey, Derbyshire, the fourth of five children. He attended Tupton Hall Grammar School, leaving in 1956 to do his National Service as a telephonist in the RAF. He spent two years at the Dudley Teachers Training College before changing course to study Art in Bournemouth and Hornsey. Eager for practical experience, he then worked as a studio assistant, first to Gwyn Hanssen and then to Bryan Newman.

In 1965 he set up his first pottery, at Westbourne Grove in London . The locale suited him perfectly, being “redolent with all the fervour and excitement of the swinging sixties, and the alternative society”.

For almost 20 years Cooper focused on creating tableware for London restaurants. While making no claims for it as art, he took “moral satisfaction” from “the good pot, well-made and useful”, produced “as efficiently and quickly as possible”.

When the handmade look in ceramics lost popularity in the affluent 1980s, he decided to give up series production and concentrate on the individual pieces for which he is now best known.

This work found equal favour with the public and critics; one touring exhibition, organised by the Ruthin Craft Centre in the mid-1990s, proved so popular that it ran for six and a half years and was described by Arts Council Wales as “Craft’s version of The Mousetrap”.

Cooper’s energy and industry were prodigious, and throughout his career he combined studio work with teaching. After spells at Harrow and the Central Foundation School for Girls, he lectured at Middlesex, Camberwell, Central St Martin’s and Goldsmith’s. From 2000 until his death he was Visiting Professor at the Royal College of Art. He was the art critic of Gay News for 10 years and of Tribune for more than 30, contributed articles to many magazines and journals, and was a frequent broadcaster for the BBC. He sat on the boards of several arts organisations and was a member of the Arts Council of Great Britain.

His practical experience and encyclopaedic knowledge of ceramics were displayed in several books on the craft, including A History of Pottery; Ten Thousand Years of Pottery; and the definitive reference book Glazes for Potters, originally published in 1978 and later revised, first as Cooper’s Book of Glaze Recipes and then as The Potter’s Book of Glaze Recipes, which has been described as “every student’s bible”. His authorised biography of Bernard Leach was published in 2003 by Yale, which will bring out his last work, a biography of Lucy Rie, in May.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, Cooper played an active role in the Gay Liberation Front and was a founder member of the Gay Left Collective. Sexual and gender politics were to remain among his dominant concerns. He wrote monographs for Gay Men’s Press on the photographers Baron von Gloeden and Arthur Tress, and the painter Henry Scott Tuke. He later published two studies of the male nude in photography, Fully Exposed and Male Bodies. His important work on homosexuality and art, The Sexual Perspective, was first published in 1986.

Cooper received many honours and awards, including a Gulbenkian Research Award in 1993, Writers Guild and Crafts Council Awards in 1997, and the Silver Medal of the Society of Designer Craftsmen in 2002. Also in 2002, he was appointed OBE .

An unassuming man, as editor, curator and teacher Cooper devoted himself unstintingly to promoting the work of his colleagues and students. In his later years he was often called upon to write forewords to catalogues and to open exhibitions. He was a sensitive and generous friend, hosting frequent dinner parties in which artists of all disciplines — and some of none — could meet and exchange views.

In 2007 Cooper was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and he endured the subsequent treatments with characteristic fortitude. His powerful work ethic ensured that he remained active to the end, correcting the proofs of his Lucy Rie biography in the days before his death.

He is survived by his partner of nearly 30 years, the television producer David Horbury, with whom he entered a civil partnership in May 2006.